<Begin Segment 12>

VY: So zooming forward to your professional career, I'm wondering, you worked in the public school system for how many years?

NO: Thirty-two years.

VY: Thirty-two years. I'm wondering, during that time, if you feel like you faced any hurdles or attitudes just because you were a woman or an Asian American woman? Any particular challenges?

NO: Good question. So I really was a very happy teacher. But Kay Oda, my husband, said, "Give it a try, give it a try." And he's been my mentor my whole life, he'd wake up in the morning, tell me what the news is, give me suggestions, 'cause I'm a little hot tempered, actually. But I have really matured and improved over fifty-five years, because I have my own mind. And so anyway, I got in a program called Sex Equity, because there were not enough women in administration. And so it was intentional to develop this new corps of women. And it was pretty interesting, we would go to conferences, and there would be all these white men around us, and there I am. But I went to a leadership program at UCLA, and it was very exciting. It was early morning to late at night, and then I'd watch David Letterman and fall asleep. That was the time, and you have to remember, I'm an older student, I'm older and everything, and I got married, had two kids, then I went to college, then I became a teacher. So everywhere I am, I'm a little older than everyone else, and actually, my father's similar, too. Because in camp, he was thirty-three, so either you're young enough to go to the army, join the 442, or you're so old you can't start a new career, so he's kind of like in the middle territory, still pretty able to write and speak. So I knew what I was getting into, and most of the Japanese American girls, to this day, do not want to do this kind of work that I did. So there are some people ahead of me, she's (Shizuko) Akasaki who just wrote a book about her experience as an administrator. And she was my kids' principal. And because I was going to school, I would be late to pick them up. But I was very strict, I said, "You sit right there and you'd better be there when my car pulls up, you better be there." So one day I must have been very late, and she brought them home to our house. And the door is open, you could leave the door open those days, and just walked in the house and parked the kids inside. So we come home and there she is, the principal with my two kids. So we still see her to this day, wonderful, wonderful person. She went through a lot of criticism, because she was bright and so the district would pull her a lot for special projects, and so we'd have substitutes and we were in Toluca Lake Elementary, so there was a lot of criticism of her, but to me, you do what you're told to a point, and especially when you're working for someone, it's not your turn. I always held my principles, like when I worked for Tangee Mason, it's her day, my day will come. And when it's my turn, I expect the same respect.

So anyway, I would be in situations like my first school was Riverside Drive, it was very... and everyone made more money than I did, and I was brought in to take the place of a very beloved person, but I never knew it. I just knew it was my first assignment, I thought it was a joke, they called me on Labor Day weekend, and they said, "You have a job," and it was like walking distance from my house. Everybody was either going to downtown if you were white, or if you were black, you were coming to the valley, so I thought, "Where do I fit into this picture?" Right by my house. So I was there for six years and the very first year, so September, by Christmas, my class was picked to do the Christmas show, not knowing the whole school was in turmoil. And I'm just in my little world with my students telling them that, "We're going to have a great year this is the best class ever," so on and so forth, and we did the Nutcracker Prince with Japanese shadow puppets, and the orchestra playing "The Nutcracker" real slow, so we had to do it slow, and music, and Rat King and it was very creative. So I survived that, and I thought, well, I am going to transfer, because people didn't like people who stood out. And I still have students from that era who came on a bus from Dayton Heights, and couldn't speak English. So I used theater a lot, because you repeat your line, you repeat your lines, you get your sentence structure, repeat your line. I was taught that way at Maryknoll, too, and that's why I'm not afraid to talk in front of people. And I thought, that's a good method, so I kind of stuck out. So I said, "I'll go to a magnet school where everybody is flashy." Oh, no, my class made boats and we'd do plays, it was called "What's New," because I was new, and we'd sing and dance across the stage. And I learned that I have to stand closer to the stage, 'cause when you yell, the kids think you're mad, but I couldn't talk very loud. And I'm learning all the time, constantly learning, whether I'm in school, Maryknoll, or go to UCLA or a teacher, I'm learning all the time, oh, don't do that, do it this way.

And so I was at the magnet school, and I just got reacquainted with some of my students yesterday. And I said, "Oh, I remember you, I just loved you," he's just all grown up now. And anyway, I took administrative classes at that time, and they asked me asked me to be coordinator, then vice principal. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't even know how to order a bus or anything, and I still don't, but I managed. [Laughs] And then I got to Haddon Avenue school, which is all Mexican kids. Everybody's a free lunch, and I was in my element. And so we brought in my friends from East Los Angeles to do a mural called "Past, Present and Future," and it shows four ethnicities, each column, and then between it shows your Mayan past, your current present with your family, love of your family, playing soccer, and the last panel is you with a graduation cap or with a tool, successful. And I loved it, I loved it so much. But I got a desire to get my own school, because all this time I'm working for somebody else, and learning how to do this job that I had studied for.

So I got to Hubbard Street school, which they picked their principal, but I actually picked them because it was near a church, and it had a park, they had Mission College, and it was very rural. It was like the book, kind of a storybook school, you read about, "Oh, I went to a school that was in the country, and we went to church, everybody knew each other." Well, it was mostly white, poor white. And the earthquake was very severe, many times up there. In fact the one time, it was so bad that the radio station said, "Principals, go check your schools." Well, all the other schools, they didn't live close to their school, I always lived close to my schools, so lucky. So I would get my flashlight and my lipstick, because I'm going to go, just in case the radio and TV's there, have to be presentable. But the challenges would be, we had celebrated Mexican independence day, and for the little Mexican kids at the school, September 16th, we would talk about what it meant, that it was more important than Cinco de Mayo, because everybody thought Cinco de Mayo was important. No, no, no, September 16th and thereabouts, 'cause the news of the independence reached the different villages at different times. So, of course, they got some flak for that, and there'd be scuffles, kids get into tumbles and all that stuff. And I come from kind of a more boy's... I see people scuffling all the time. So anyway, I'd have to talk to the parents, and they would say racist things against the minority group, and of course I'd have to stand up for them. I'm thinking, "Can't they see me?" And I thought, maybe they just see me today in my suit and my nice car, and I look untroubled. I thought, no, this troubles me, this is not okay. So what I was fighting for was children's rights, not specific group. And so I would talk to them. And maybe not change their minds, but that's the way I see it, and that's the way it's got to go. And we don't bring a switch to school to beat your kid, we don't do that. Because we've had people come to the office, we've had divorced parents, and I said, "Oh, no, we're closing right now, because we're not going to do this." So parents sometimes need help growing up, too.

So my next school, Sendak, brand new school from the ground up -- excuse me -- and they are a little rougher than my last school. So I said, okay, I want you to bring all your brothers and sisters to the school, older brother and sisters, and I'm going to ask them, I'm going to deputize them to protect the school. It has never been tagged, everywhere around there is... but it's a gentrified area, it's moving towards the school. The division of the school is a beacon, literally, for that community of what life could be. So it's a performing arts school. And it's different than most L.A. schools because most schools spend maybe four hours on reading, but we brought in a violin teacher, artist, people like that, and people wanted to name the school and give me money for it, and my sister did, too. She wanted to name it after our dad, and I said, "That's unethical. No, no, no, I can't be bought. I need money, but no." And so that was bad, but she came to the opening. The opening finally become everything that we didn't play, because we wanted a woman, we wanted an author, and we wanted local. Well, each person had something wrong with their background, they check all this stuff out. We just submit the names and we vote, there's a whole process. So it became Maruice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are, 'cause he's from New York, he's gay, he's kind of dark in his writing, and of course the kids go crazy because Where the Wild Things... and maybe that was a mistake. But the school is really a fun place to be, it's just great. You just go there and it has energy, but then cherry blossoms 'cause I was there, they have an Australian willow tree, 'cause one of our members from Tonga, so it's kind of a diverse community. But it's getting, there's encroachment, because the NoHo district, North Hollywood district, is gentrifying block by block by block. They won't see it today from here, but these people lived in garages, many of my students did come from garages, and they're very poor. And the grandparents have tattoos all over. So age was good, because I was older than everybody. At my other schools, age was bad because I was younger than the teachers, but I knew I would outlast them, because good teachers have to be what we deliver, I have to have good teachers. I can't allow people who are cruel to students or yelling. No yelling, no, no. And so this last school, it's beautiful, absolutely top notch, we had electric plugs. You can imagine teaching in L.A., I mean, the schools are so old, they didn't even have plugs for internet. So this school had everything, and it was just beautiful.

And I just recently went back for a parent education class, because one my friends is teaching English there, and love their cooking, it's really good. But the challenges you face are, I always say, every problem has a solution, every person deserves respect. So my office staff would say, "She walked in screaming and she walks out smiling." But then the next day, that lady brings you food or flowers, they go, "What do you do in there?" And I said, "Well, just talk about what happened." Because everybody wants to be right... not everyone, but people want to fight, and I'm not going there, just going to say, "It's really not okay if we allow this to continue. There's a reason why..." and I don't shout at them, it's just like we're doing now, we just kind of let it sink in a bit. But I think the most important thing is to give people hope and give them a future, so they're frustrated. They're not yelling at me, they're yelling at the world. And I'm thinking, okay, I can't be that important that they're going to give up a whole day's work. Somebody said, oh, because these kids run and walk through the neighborhood, they said, "You do that?" I go, "Yeah, that's how you meet people." And I know he'll come back, because we're the best thing that ever happened to this kid. They do come back, but they like to run a little, and I understand that, 'cause I was not perfect.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.